Washington Summary

Washington is a state of amazing natural beauty whose mountains, thick forests, and coastline compete for attention. Occupying the northwest corner of the Lower 48, on the Pacific coast, Washington (population 5.7 million) is the only state named for a US president. It borders the Pacific Ocean in the west; British Columbia, Canada, in the north; Idaho in the east; and Oregon — with which it shares the Columbia River Gorge — to the south.

Its nickname, “The Evergreen State,” heralds the forests of fir, pine, and hemlock — the foundation of the lumber industry that helped establish port cities such as Seattle, Tacoma, and Aberdeen. While aluminum smelting, fishing, farming, forestry, and maritime trade remain important, companies like Boeing and Microsoft put Washington in the vanguard of aerospace and computer technologies.

Native Americans occupied Washington 11,500 years before British fur trappers arrived: the Chinook and Salish west of the Nez Perce, the Yakima to the east. The first white settlers came from the Midwest in the 1830s.

Washington’s highest point is the dormant, snowcapped Mt Rainier volcano; at 14,410 feet, it is the highest mountain in the Cascade Range which cuts Washington in two. West of the mountains is temperate, fertile, and well watered, with up to 140 inches of rain annually on the Olympic Peninsula.

Greater Seattle is the industrial, commercial, financial, and cultural capital, while Olympia is the political capital. In the two-thirds of the state east of the Cascades, rainfall in places averages only 10 inches a year, and the fertile farmlands depend on the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project. As well as providing much-needed irrigation, dams and reservoirs along the Columbia River also produce a third of the nation’s hydroelectric power. Spokane is the region’s center of commerce and transportation.